The group on Thursday also cited potential danger to buildings at O'Hare International Airport and the former Michael Reese Hospital site that was cleared after Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Olympics failed.

Gov. Bruce Rauner backs legislation to sell the controversial, postmodern Thompson Center to a real estate developer who could demolish the state office building to construct a larger structure on the site bounded by Clark, LaSalle, Randolph and Lake streets.

The Thompson Center opened in 1985 as the State of Illinois Center and immediately became notorious for functional problems including heat spikes. State officials argue that the building is an inefficient workplace and that financially struggling Illinois could use revenue from a sale.

Helmut Jahn's 17-story structure made its 1985 debut as the State of Illinois Building. Its $172 million price tag was nearly double the original estimate. The center was renamed for former Gov. James R. Thompson in 1993.

Jahn, who has said the building is poorly maintained, has proposed an alternative plan that would save the Thompson Center and its soaring atrium and put a 1,340-foot hotel and residential skyscraper alongside it.

Other properties listed by Landmarks Illinois include:

•The O'Hare airport Rotunda building, an acclaimed 1960s design by the late Gertrude Kerbis, done while she worked for the Chicago firm of Naess & Murphy (later C.F. Murphy & Associates).

The thin concrete roof of the circular building, suspended by steel cables from a central steel ring, is "Chicago's only such structural tour de force," according to the "AIA Guide to Chicago." The building housed the now-closed Seven Continents restaurant and provided an oasis of calm amid the airport's busy corridors.

Landmarks Illinois said the building, currently used as a vestibule to Terminal 3's Concourse G, "could be vulnerable in the future as major changes and upgrades are planned at O'Hare."

•The Singer Pavilion, the lone building that remains from the Michael Reese Hospital complex near the intersection of 31st Street and Lake Shore Drive.

The 17-story postmodern marvel in Chicago has proved costly and inefficient...

The former psychiatric facility was co-designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and Chicago firm Loebl, Schlossman and Bennett. Gropius urged a careful selection of colors and patterns so interior furnishings would not disturb patients. In 1951, the project won an American Institute of Architects award.

At the behest of former Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Reese site in 2009 was cleared of all of its buildings, with the exception of the Singer Pavilion, after Chicago lost its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. The site has sat unused ever since.

The pavilion is vacant, Landmarks Illinois said, and reuse of the Singer Pavilion is uncertain.

Landmarks Illinois also placed the Illinois portion of historic Route 66 and the state's World War I monuments on its list of endangered properties.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 07, 2017, in the News section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "Thompson Center tops list of endangered sites in Ill." —
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